an anonymous referee, and audiences at Simon Fraser University, the Society for Exact Philosophy,... more an anonymous referee, and audiences at Simon Fraser University, the Society for Exact Philosophy, the Western Canadian Philosophical Association, and the Russell vs. Meinong Conference for helpful comments on various aspects of this paper. 2 In our quotations, we leave Bedeutung, Sinn, and Bezeichnung (and cognates) untranslated in order to avoid the confusion that would be brought on by using 'nominatum', 'reference', and 'meaning' for Bedeutung, and 'meaning' or 'sense' for Sinn. We got this idea from Russell's practice in his reading notes (see Linsky 2004). Otherwise we generally follow Black's translation of "Über Sinn und Bedeutung" (in the 3rd Edition), Furth's translation of Grundgesetze, and Austin's tranlsation of Grundlagen.
Journal for the History of Analytical Philosophy, 2018
This paper investigates the strange case of an argument that was directed against a positivist ve... more This paper investigates the strange case of an argument that was directed against a positivist verification principle. We find an early occurrence of the argument in a talk by the phenomenologist Roman Ingarden at the 1934 International Congress of Philosophy in Prague, where Carnap and Neurath were present and contributed short rejoinders. We discuss the underlying presuppositons of the argument, and we evaluate whether the attempts by Carnap (especially) actually succeed in answering this argument. We think they don’t, and offer instead a few sociological thoughts about why the argument seems to have disappeared from the profession’s evaluaton of the positivist criterion of verifiability.
Journal for the History of Analytical Philosophy, May 14, 2018
Translated by Bernard Linsky This is the first English translation of Roman Ingarden's paper pres... more Translated by Bernard Linsky This is the first English translation of Roman Ingarden's paper presented at the th World Congress of Philosophy held in Prague in : "Der Logistische Versuch einer Neugestaltung der Philosophie: Eine Kritische Bemerkung", translated here as "The Logical Attempt at a New Formulation of Philosophy: A Critical Remark". Also translated here are brief discussions by Rudolf Carnap and Otto Neurath. These essays were published in the original German in the Proceedings of the Congress in. This statement of Ingarden's criticisms of the doctrines of the Vienna Circle has been mentioned in print, but his views have not been discussed, or indeed accurately reported to date.
Russell: the Journal of Bertrand Russell Studies, 2020
We report here on the set of complete proofs of Volumes I and II of Whitehead and Russell’s Princ... more We report here on the set of complete proofs of Volumes I and II of Whitehead and Russell’s Principia Mathematica newly acquired by the Bertrand Russell Archives. These proof sheets, marked with a number of corrections, were likely bound for Russell by Cambridge University Press, though not exactly the same as the first edition. We assess the information to be gained from the texts and the corrections, most significantly around *110 in Vol. II and the lost dot of the empty relation in Vol. I. All are in Russell’s hand and described in an appendix. We also note several revisions in the first edition that were made after these proofs. We discuss the provenance of the volumes, and Russell’s correspondence about proofs of PM with M. H. Dziewicki, but we find that there is insufficient evidence to determine the chain of possession from Russell to their discovery for sale in Australia in recent years.
In this paper, the authors briefly summarize how object theory uses definite descriptions to iden... more In this paper, the authors briefly summarize how object theory uses definite descriptions to identify the denotations of the individual terms of theoretical mathematics and then further develop their object-theoretic philosophy of mathematics by showing how it has the resources to address some objections recently raised against the theory. Certain 'canonical' descriptions of object theory, which are guaranteed to denote, correctly identify mathematical objects for each mathematical theory T , independently of how well someone understands the descriptive condition. And to have a false belief about some particular mathematical object is not to have a true belief about some different mathematical object.
Journal for the History of Analytical Philosophy, 2017
This is the first English translation of Leon Chwistek’s “Tragedia werbalnej metafizyki (Z powodu... more This is the first English translation of Leon Chwistek’s “Tragedia werbalnej metafizyki (Z powodu książki Dra Ingardena: Das literarische Kunstwerk),” Kwartalnik Filozoficzny, Vol. X, 1932, 46–76. Chwistek offers a scathing critique of Roman Ingarden’s Das literarische Kunstwerk (translated into English as The Literary Work of Art) and of the entire Phenomenology movement. The text also contains many hints at Chwistek’s own philosophical and formal ideas. The book that Chwistek reviews attracted wide attention and was instrumental in winning Ingarden a position as Professor of Philosophy at the University of Lwów in 1933. Chwistek’s alienation from his fellow logicians of the Lvov-Warsaw school is clear from his ridicule of Leśniewski’s project.
In “The Meaning of ‘Meaning’”, Hilary Putnam presents several arguments to show that natural kind... more In “The Meaning of ‘Meaning’”, Hilary Putnam presents several arguments to show that natural kind terms do not have a meaning or “sense” of a Fregean sort. Instead, he says, they function much like indexicals such as “this” or “I”, whose reference is determined by the circumstances of their use, not by unique properties of the referent that might be “expressed” in a sense. Putnam further argues that this account covers most general terms in our language, not just kind terms like “water” and “tiger”. He thus presents a serious challenge for the traditional notion of meaning, for if he is right only a few score words would be left with a meaning.In this paper I wish to distinguish three arguments which appear intermingled in “The Meaning of ‘Meaning’”. Two of the arguments make explicit use of the same science-fiction example of a “Twin Earth” while the third uses a related example, and all three might be seen as showing that kind terms are like “rigid designators”. My purpose is to s...
Russell’s letter to Frege of June 16, 1902 contains the famous paradox of the class of all classe... more Russell’s letter to Frege of June 16, 1902 contains the famous paradox of the class of all classes which are not members of themselves as well as a second paradox of the predicates that cannot be predicated of themselves. The latter paradox arises out of Russell’s theory of classes and class concepts in Principles of Mathematics.
an anonymous referee, and audiences at Simon Fraser University, the Society for Exact Philosophy,... more an anonymous referee, and audiences at Simon Fraser University, the Society for Exact Philosophy, the Western Canadian Philosophical Association, and the Russell vs. Meinong Conference for helpful comments on various aspects of this paper. 2 In our quotations, we leave Bedeutung, Sinn, and Bezeichnung (and cognates) untranslated in order to avoid the confusion that would be brought on by using 'nominatum', 'reference', and 'meaning' for Bedeutung, and 'meaning' or 'sense' for Sinn. We got this idea from Russell's practice in his reading notes (see Linsky 2004). Otherwise we generally follow Black's translation of "Über Sinn und Bedeutung" (in the 3rd Edition), Furth's translation of Grundgesetze, and Austin's tranlsation of Grundlagen.
Journal for the History of Analytical Philosophy, 2018
This paper investigates the strange case of an argument that was directed against a positivist ve... more This paper investigates the strange case of an argument that was directed against a positivist verification principle. We find an early occurrence of the argument in a talk by the phenomenologist Roman Ingarden at the 1934 International Congress of Philosophy in Prague, where Carnap and Neurath were present and contributed short rejoinders. We discuss the underlying presuppositons of the argument, and we evaluate whether the attempts by Carnap (especially) actually succeed in answering this argument. We think they don’t, and offer instead a few sociological thoughts about why the argument seems to have disappeared from the profession’s evaluaton of the positivist criterion of verifiability.
Journal for the History of Analytical Philosophy, May 14, 2018
Translated by Bernard Linsky This is the first English translation of Roman Ingarden's paper pres... more Translated by Bernard Linsky This is the first English translation of Roman Ingarden's paper presented at the th World Congress of Philosophy held in Prague in : "Der Logistische Versuch einer Neugestaltung der Philosophie: Eine Kritische Bemerkung", translated here as "The Logical Attempt at a New Formulation of Philosophy: A Critical Remark". Also translated here are brief discussions by Rudolf Carnap and Otto Neurath. These essays were published in the original German in the Proceedings of the Congress in. This statement of Ingarden's criticisms of the doctrines of the Vienna Circle has been mentioned in print, but his views have not been discussed, or indeed accurately reported to date.
Russell: the Journal of Bertrand Russell Studies, 2020
We report here on the set of complete proofs of Volumes I and II of Whitehead and Russell’s Princ... more We report here on the set of complete proofs of Volumes I and II of Whitehead and Russell’s Principia Mathematica newly acquired by the Bertrand Russell Archives. These proof sheets, marked with a number of corrections, were likely bound for Russell by Cambridge University Press, though not exactly the same as the first edition. We assess the information to be gained from the texts and the corrections, most significantly around *110 in Vol. II and the lost dot of the empty relation in Vol. I. All are in Russell’s hand and described in an appendix. We also note several revisions in the first edition that were made after these proofs. We discuss the provenance of the volumes, and Russell’s correspondence about proofs of PM with M. H. Dziewicki, but we find that there is insufficient evidence to determine the chain of possession from Russell to their discovery for sale in Australia in recent years.
In this paper, the authors briefly summarize how object theory uses definite descriptions to iden... more In this paper, the authors briefly summarize how object theory uses definite descriptions to identify the denotations of the individual terms of theoretical mathematics and then further develop their object-theoretic philosophy of mathematics by showing how it has the resources to address some objections recently raised against the theory. Certain 'canonical' descriptions of object theory, which are guaranteed to denote, correctly identify mathematical objects for each mathematical theory T , independently of how well someone understands the descriptive condition. And to have a false belief about some particular mathematical object is not to have a true belief about some different mathematical object.
Journal for the History of Analytical Philosophy, 2017
This is the first English translation of Leon Chwistek’s “Tragedia werbalnej metafizyki (Z powodu... more This is the first English translation of Leon Chwistek’s “Tragedia werbalnej metafizyki (Z powodu książki Dra Ingardena: Das literarische Kunstwerk),” Kwartalnik Filozoficzny, Vol. X, 1932, 46–76. Chwistek offers a scathing critique of Roman Ingarden’s Das literarische Kunstwerk (translated into English as The Literary Work of Art) and of the entire Phenomenology movement. The text also contains many hints at Chwistek’s own philosophical and formal ideas. The book that Chwistek reviews attracted wide attention and was instrumental in winning Ingarden a position as Professor of Philosophy at the University of Lwów in 1933. Chwistek’s alienation from his fellow logicians of the Lvov-Warsaw school is clear from his ridicule of Leśniewski’s project.
In “The Meaning of ‘Meaning’”, Hilary Putnam presents several arguments to show that natural kind... more In “The Meaning of ‘Meaning’”, Hilary Putnam presents several arguments to show that natural kind terms do not have a meaning or “sense” of a Fregean sort. Instead, he says, they function much like indexicals such as “this” or “I”, whose reference is determined by the circumstances of their use, not by unique properties of the referent that might be “expressed” in a sense. Putnam further argues that this account covers most general terms in our language, not just kind terms like “water” and “tiger”. He thus presents a serious challenge for the traditional notion of meaning, for if he is right only a few score words would be left with a meaning.In this paper I wish to distinguish three arguments which appear intermingled in “The Meaning of ‘Meaning’”. Two of the arguments make explicit use of the same science-fiction example of a “Twin Earth” while the third uses a related example, and all three might be seen as showing that kind terms are like “rigid designators”. My purpose is to s...
Russell’s letter to Frege of June 16, 1902 contains the famous paradox of the class of all classe... more Russell’s letter to Frege of June 16, 1902 contains the famous paradox of the class of all classes which are not members of themselves as well as a second paradox of the predicates that cannot be predicated of themselves. The latter paradox arises out of Russell’s theory of classes and class concepts in Principles of Mathematics.
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Papers by Bernard Linsky